


We won't build a home

by becka



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Absence, Barebacking, Homecoming, M/M, Moving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:32:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3854242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becka/pseuds/becka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick's been technically “living” in his new house for a week, but it doesn’t feel like home at all yet. And then Harry comes back to London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We won't build a home

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Lucy for looking this over, as always. <3
> 
> Title from Betty Who.

Nick's been technically “living” in his new house for a week, but it doesn’t feel like home at all. It's so much bigger than his flat in Primrose Hill was, and he's waffling about furniture because that's such a commitment to a style, so at the moment it’s still just him and Pig wandering around a bunch of echoingly empty rooms with paint swatches tacked to the walls. And Pig loves it because she can rampage unimpeded and sniff around the packing cases full of stuff Nick will eventually hang up once he chooses paint colors. But Nick feels displaced and lonely in a way he didn't expect when he was planning his move, when it was just like, Yeah, brilliant, more room for parties, everyone can stay over at mine and not be on top of each other! Now it's occurring to him you need to choose three bloody bedrooms' worth of extra furniture for that.

And then Harry comes home, entirely without warning because he doesn't schedule his flights much in advance, and it’s just one more confusing thing to add to the pile. They’ve said they’re not waiting, that they’re going on with their lives and what happens happens, and they’ll always be friends no matter what. It’s such a good idea, freedom.

Harry doesn't actually tell Nick he’s on his way home, of course, just instagrams a picture of an airport lounge somewhere and Nick spends several minutes guiltily stalking the internet trying to figure out where Harry's going. Which of course he can't. Harry might go to LA. He might spend this break halfway across the world again, and Nick might not even know. But then he gets a text at 6 the next morning as he's walking into Radio 1 saying, _What's your new address?_ followed by one saying, _Also can I come by? :)_

And it's stupid, that Nick comes over all shaky and hot, thinking about Harry wandering through his new house. But he knows why he does because one of the things he wants to get better at in his thirties is not lying to himself.

So he texts back all casual and matey ( _yeah! soon as i'm off the radio!_ ), and then casually cancels his meetings for the rest of the day, saying he has house things to do and muttering something about cable installation, because he hasn’t resolved not to lie to other people.

Harry shows up around two, when Nick's already had hours to get keyed up about it and Pig is practically having a fit from the tension in the house. Nick wants to let her out in the garden, but it's pissing down rain, and wet dog seems like too much on top of everything else.

When Harry knocks, Nick's up like a shot, tripping over Pig on the way to the door. He flings it open, and Harry looks cold and bedraggled, his hood cinched in tight around his face, his cheeks pink. He's bloody gorgeous, more so every time.

"Hiya," says Harry. "It's raining."

"Welcome to England," says Nick. "Take your shoes off inside the door." He needs to stop staring at the damp curls slipping out over Harry's forehead, but he can't. He's afraid he sounds a bit gruff without meaning to. "You get here alright?" he adds, 

"Fine, thanks." Harry reaches out to clutch Nick's shoulder as he stands on one foot to unzip one boot and then the other, wobbling a bit. It's a careless motion, but Nick tenses anyway, Harry's cold fingers digging in. There's a hole in the heel of one of his socks, and Nick looks at that instead of Harry's face as Harry leans into him. It’s working fine until Harry morphs the hold on his shoulder into a full-on hug, suddenly pressed close and damp against Nick’s chest. "I missed you," he says more quietly. "Is that okay? I don't know if I was supposed to." Freedom is complete bullshit, really.

Nick tugs Harry's hood back, ruffles his fingers through Harry's long hair, pulling him in tighter. "That's okay," he says, which isn't quite true. He feels winded, and he isn't even moving. Harry can probably feel the frantic thumping of his heart. Somehow Nick hadn't thought it would be quite this devastating. "I wasn't waiting," he tells Harry uselessly.

"Me either," says Harry. "I wasn't." Pig is nosing around their feet, wagging her tail and grunting endearingly. Harry lets go of Nick to pat her, kneeling down in the hall and rubbing his hand along her back. He doesn't look up as he says, "There just wasn't anyone else."

Nick shoves his hands in his pockets, and the joke he wants to make dies on his tongue. _I’m a lot to live up to_ , he might say, but he doesn’t. Instead he just whispers, “Yeah.” Harry looks up, wide-eyed and silent, and Pig noses at his hand. It’s such a long time before Harry speaks.

“What do we do?” says Harry.

Nick sighs, clenches his fists inside his pockets, knuckles digging into his thighs. “Whatever we like, innit? Wasn’t that the point? Freedom?”

Harry stands up, ignoring Pig’s plaintive little noise. He steps into Nick’s space again, close enough to touch. “I’d like to kiss you then,” says Harry.

And then Nick doesn’t have to say anything else for a while. He catches Harry’s mouth with his, and it’s slow and simple and might just crack everything open inside him. They fit so nicely, Harry’s lips parting against his, their bodies lining up as though there weren’t months and months where they didn’t touch. Pig is doing her best pathetic whine, and Nick can hear that even with the sound of Harry’s breath and his own heartbeat singing through his body. “Wait,” he says against Harry’s mouth. “Let me bribe the dog. I’ll be quick.”

Harry grins, big and bright, dimples out in full force for Pig, who’s staring adoringly up at him. “You like bribes, do you?” Harry says to her.

Nick rolls his eyes. “Don’t bloomin’ encourage her. Come on, Pig, let’s have a snack.” Practically all he has in are posh dog treats, not even any human food, but that seems lucky now. He tosses Pig a couple of treats and unearths her favorite bone from under the fridge. He babbles to her while she’s crunching away, and when he looks up, Harry’s stood in the kitchen doorway watching him. He’s got his hoodie off, and the shadows of his tattoos show through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. Nick drags his arm out from under the fridge.

“Nice bone,” says Harry.

“Cheers,” says Nick, waving the bone for Pig. “Ed Sheeran said he’d heard I was packing.”

Harry goes a bit red, ducking his head and hiding behind his hair. “Can’t imagine where he heard that.”

“Nor me. Vicious rumour.” Nick stands, ignoring the way his knees pop.

Harry licks his lips. “Have you even got a bed yet?”

The nearly empty lounge behind him would give anyone cause for doubt. Nick nods. “Just the same old one though. Plenty of good memories in it.”

Nick leads him upstairs and Harry pauses inside Nick’s bedroom door. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Harry says quietly. “Any commitment or anything. We had a deal.”

It hurts, sharp through Nick’s chest. “If you want,” is all he can say.

“What if I don’t?” Harry asks. Another one of those long pauses, and Nick waits for him to find the words. “Nick, there’s no one else. I tried, and there’s no one else. There’s no one who makes me stop thinking about you.”

And that doesn’t hurt less, somehow, just makes Nick feel like he might cry, like Harry’s prying him apart. Because he wants that and he can’t have it. Harry’s going to be gone again in a few days, at the very most. And he can’t go through all his life feeling like this.

He stands very still, like he’s confronting some kind of dangerous animal, like Harry might lunge and snap at him at any moment. “You’re so far away all the time,” he says carefully.

“Not right now though,” Harry replies. “Right now I’m just here.”

“Is that enough?”

Harry’s shoulders slump. “No. I know. I know it’s not, like, what you want. But I never stop thinking about you. I don’t know how to do anything except this.” He sounds like he might cry, and Nick wants to hold him and kiss him and tell him to forget it, this is fine, this will do. But it won’t; it never has.

“You know how to do other things. You go to LA all the time now.” Nick doesn’t mean to say it. He knows he doesn’t have a right to be jealous of the other life Harry’s building in America, knows he’s greedy and awful where he used to be chill and excited for every new experience Harry had.

Harry frowns. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” says Nick quickly. “No. You should be where you’re happiest, where you’ll have the best stories to tell.”

“I don’t have to go to LA to have stories, or to be happy. I could just come here. I could just…” He sounds panicked, like Nick is asking him for something, and that’s the last thing Nick wants.

Nick steps forward and pulls Harry into him before he accidentally hyperventilates. “No, love,” Nick says, nuzzling at his cheek. “I never want you to change. I never want you to make choices like that. Not for me.”

Harry turns his head, close enough to kiss, close enough for Nick to feel Harry’s breath. It would be so easy to just kiss him, to stop this conversation and do what they’ve always done. “I miss you,” Harry says quietly.

“I miss you too,” says Nick. “But that’s the life, isn’t it? That’s being a popstar.” He’s trying to convince himself as much as Harry, because the greedy, awful part of him wants to hang on too tight. “You don’t want to give up all that, do you?”

“I just want it to be okay that I miss you,” Harry tells him. “I don’t want that to be too much.”

“It’s not,” says Nick. “I promise it’s not.” He kisses the tight corner of Harry’s mouth.

Harry shuts his eyes. Nick feels shaky and unqualified for all of this. “And what if I don’t want to be with anybody else?” Harry asks. “Can I tell you that too?”

“You already have.”

“Do you want me to take it back?”

Nick shakes his head. “Don’t take it back.” He kisses the corner of Harry’s mouth again, like he can nudge it out of its frown. There’s no one else. There’s no one else in the world he could want like he wants Harry, this yawning, miserable ache that must be love or Nick would just give it all up. Pining wouldn’t be worth it for anyone short of Harry Styles.

“I don’t want to, like, ask you to commit to anything,” Harry says, but he’s kissing Nick now, and that’s so much better than talking about feelings. Nick winds a hand into Harry’s long hair and kisses him back, sucking at the plush softness of Harry’s lower lip. He’s not prepared to commit to anything more arduous than a puppy right now, and some days he even thinks Pig is a bit much.

So Nick doesn’t have to say anything, and Harry keeps on kissing him anyway, fitting into his space just right, just the way they always used to. It’s frightening, in Nick’s own house, his first proper house that he’s just bought, the way that kissing Harry is the first thing to feel like home. It hurts more than he’d expected, for something he knew already, and he tucks it away so maybe he won’t have to consider it again for a while. Harry is here now, but even with his best intentions, he can’t stay. And that will give Nick plenty of time for self-recrimination further on.

Nick undresses them both while Harry blinks around the room and lets himself be manoeuvred towards the bed. Nick doesn’t even stop to apologize for the mess. All the bedroom storage in his flat was built-ins, so he’s just been living out of suitcases the last few days, and it shows. He didn’t really think about having guests, and he hasn’t done much today but shove things in the corner.

“It’s a nice house,” says Harry, lying back on Nick’s bed in his little black pants, the tattoo on his thigh stark and distracting. Nick puts his hand over it, trailing his thumb up the inside of Harry’s thigh. He used to like kissing every one of Harry’s new tattoos each time he came home.

“Thanks,” he says. “It’ll be better with furniture and things.” They look at each other for a long moment, Nick sat between Harry’s legs, nearly naked.

“We don’t have to,” says Harry, even though his cock is obscenely obvious in his pants. Nick goes down on him without another word, mouthing at him through the fabric first, and then tugging down his pants to suck him properly. Harry gasps and rolls his head against the pillow, pressing a hand to Nick’s cheek. Nick doesn’t generally love sucking cock, finds it boring most times, but then he’s never loved a cock the way he loves Harry’s, the heavy weight of it on his tongue, the soft plaintive sounds Harry makes as Nick cups his balls.

Nick’s fingers find their way into the crack of Harry’s arse, and he teases at Harry’s hole, makes Harry spread wider and squirm under him. Harry mumbles something into his own shoulder and Nick pulls off to look up. His lips are already swollen when he licks at them. “What was that, love?”

“Can you fuck me?” Harry says softly. And Nick hadn’t been planning to, hadn’t considered the sort of sex that requires supplies, but Harry is flushed and needy, big eyes and softly bitten mouth, and Nick wants to give him everything he can.

Nick hesitates though. He’s got a bottle of lube in the bedside table. “Have you got a condom?”

Harry shakes his head. “I stopped, like, just carrying them. I wasn’t using them, so.”

Nick feels that sharp ache in his chest again. “Yeah.”

“Maybe we could not.”

Nick shrugs. “I can finish you off with my mouth. I don’t mind.”

Harry shifts a little. “No, I mean, without a condom. If there’s no one else.”

That’s more of a commitment than words could be, in a way, and Nick thinks he should say no, but he doesn’t. He kisses Harry slow and deep and then reaches into the bedside table. Harry’s eyes slip shut as Nick presses a finger into him, Harry smooth and tight around him. Harry opens his mouth like he wants to speak, but he doesn’t, just arches into Nick’s hand, his cock bobbing against his belly.

By the time Nick guides his cock into the slick heat of Harry’s arse, Harry is moaning and shifting restlessly, begging with his whole body. They fucked without a condom once or twice, back in the days when Harry stayed in London on his breaks, spent his nights in Nick’s bed often as not. It felt dirty and hot then, irresponsible but not actually dangerous. It’s oddly heart-breaking now, Harry opening to him in this intimate way, their bodies interlocking. Nick moves in him slowly, and when their eyes catch, it’s electric.

Harry comes untouched, working himself on Nick’s cock, years of practice in every movement. He’s gorgeously undone, holding Nick in him with one long leg around his waist. “Are you close?” he asks dreamily.

Nick nods, starting to pull out so he can come across Harry’s heaving belly. But Harry digs his heel into the base of Nick’s spine. “In me,” he whispers, and Nick shuts his eyes and comes, pressing his face into the side of Harry’s neck. The smell of Harry’s skin is so familiar and so foreign, and Nick breathes against him for a moment before he makes himself get up.

“Can I stay?” Harry asks, as Nick steps out of the en suite with a wet flannel.

Nick drops the flannel on his belly. “Stay as long as you want,” he says. What he means is “as long as you can”, but that feels cruel.

Harry stretches out an arm and draws Nick in tight to his side. “I can help you decorate,” Harry says. “I’ve got great style.”

“You’re an idiot,” says Nick fondly, but the truth is he would give anything to have Harry stick around long enough to pick ugly lamps and bright orange paint. Probably they both know that.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr [here](http://realmenwearpuppypants.tumblr.com/).


End file.
